You might now ask why that particular editor needed to buy all those five tickets for a simple flight to a foreign city, and then find himself pursued by all those angry media people who had once thought that he was their guardian. Well, here was the guardian trying to leave the country after committing that most outrageous of acts -- closing down the newspaper he had been editing for so long.

And why must an individual, who imagines he is a professional upright journalist, think of fleeing the country, unless he is afraid of what might happen to him, and his kind, in the days ahead? Ah, you realise with a start, professionalism and uprightness simply do not form the bedrock of performance for such journalists. Opportunism does.

But we will let that be, for now. There is little point in dwelling on men and women who have consistently made it a pastime to gamble with life and its opportunities, and then quit the field. It is not these men and women who have suffered through a bad gamble. It is others, like those journalists in hot pursuit of their editor, who have paid the price for their indiscretions and their venality.

Speaking of gambles, you might now wish to reflect on all the indiscreet things the BNP-wallahs have been doing lately, where arranging the next general elections is concerned. Abdul Mannan Bhuiyan was observed reassuring the country, even after that last dialogue-related meeting with Abdul Jalil, that the talks between his party and the Awami League had not broken down. That left us all with some faint hope that a miracle could occur in the end, and life for us would return to a semblance of normality.

But the gods and the BNP, unbeknownst to us, had something else in store for the country. As the nation celebrated Eid, and willed itself into forgetting, for some time, the political crisis paralysing the country, Mannan Bhuiyan and his friends in the BNP opened up a new, nauseatingly raw wound for all of us.

They insisted that there was no question of Justice KM Hasan not becoming the head of the next caretaker government. The contradiction between word and deed could not have been clearer. Bhuiyan's deliberate torpedoing of the talks with Jalil ran counter to his earlier assurance that the negotiations had not broken down. After that, it was only a matter of time before all hell broke loose.

And hell opened up, in fury, when Khaleda Zia went on her own mind-boggling radio and television offensive to offer a newer twist to the term bizarre. If it was not lies she was hurling at the country about the work of her administration in the past five years, it was unvarnished untruth she peddled before us.

It is rather an uncomfortable feeling knowing that there are powerful people who are blissfully content to live in a world of unreality. When you have a prime minister who thinks that night is day, that darkness is light, indeed that a hundred and forty million people are a mass of gullible human beings, you are tempted to ask: How could such people manage to rise so high in politics, high enough to be given the power to rule a country of good, honest human beings?

How is it that the BNP, and its partners in government, have so callously, and so foolishly, failed to read the writing on the wall all these years? They have never had the opportunity to feel what men like Col. Oli Ahmed have never failed to see. You might argue that such men as Oli Ahmed and Sheikh Razzak Ali have had their reasons to grouse because they could not land good jobs in the government. That is surely something you cannot ignore.

On a wider span, though, it is the courage, indeed the unequivocal sentiments in these men that should impress you. When Oli Ahmed demands that the corrupt and the invidious, ranging from the Zia family and running all across the unending regions of their minions, be prevented from leaving the country and thereby escaping justice, you know how miserable a state we have all been pushed into by a regime that was as remarkable for its intellectual vacuum as it was for its grasping habits.

And yet Khaleda Zia says she has done wonders for the country in these five terrible years. The result of those wonders is out there in the open -- all around us are images of the kind of popular revolt which soon becomes known as People Power. The rampaging fury of the population is something we condemn, and insist that it be checked vigorously.

Then again, we will be doing ourselves a truly good favour if we channel all this anger, all this fury, into a systematic, insistent, and continuous mass protest against a bunch of individuals who have either not performed or have performed in bizarre manner. The functionaries of the now departed alliance government have compelled, more than once, newspaper editors into seeking bail through leading hordes of their mob-like followers into judges' rooms, and having warrants of arrest issued against these defenders of freedom of speech.

The now-out-of-office finance minister, even as he railed against corruption, did not see that he was indeed promoting it through letting evil men transform their ill-gotten money into legitimate wealth. You could go on and on about the doings of nearly every man and woman who has been part of, or was associated with, the alliance government.

Let it suffice, for now, to know that where corrupt elements have often infiltrated governments all over the globe, the government we have just said farewell to has been a whole, unadulterated symbol of corruption itself. Within the Prime Minister's Office, and in the damp, ominous-looking corridors of Hawa Bhaban have lurked the elements whose contributions to our state of misery hardly need any restating.

But we will not quibble, if only because the men and women who have misgoverned in these five years have now found their way out of power. Yes, to be sure, we can raise a howl of protest at the clearly lopsided manner in which President Iajuddin Ahmed has taken charge of the caretaker administration. We will watch him, as the opposition will watch him, with eagle eyes in the next few days and weeks, to know if he is in a position to preside over a free, fair and transparent election.

If he means to take the country back on the road to constitutional, democratic politics, he will need to act in a pretty large number of areas. Priority-wise, it is the Election Commission, as it is constituted at present, that must go. MA Aziz and the three election commissioners have lost their credibility, and no matter how much they promise to be good from here on we cannot bring ourselves to believe that they can give us an acceptable election.

The president must then move forcefully into shaking up and reshaping the administrative apparatus by removing from positions of strategically important authority all those civil and police bureaucrats whose loyalty to the alliance government has been a major source of popular discontent in these last few years.

We would not have reason to voice all these worries had the President followed the constitution and permitted Justice Mahmudul Amin Chowdhury, or Justice Hamidul Haq, to organise the caretaker administration. But since Iajuddin has been head of state, courtesy of the Bangladesh Nationalist Party, it is difficult to accept the notion that he will now, in miraculous manner, transform himself into a leader for an entire country.

But if he can call forth the courage to go after the corrupt elements of the BNP-led government, even as he goes about organising the election, and haul them up before the law, he will convince us that he has the ability and scope to grow in office. He will need to prove that he has emerged, clearly and powerfully, from the shadow of those who once placed him in the presidency. If he can do that, he can look forward to a good place in national history. If he cannot, it will once more be time for the country to go looking for the man or woman who will have it in him or her to lead us out of the woods.

Beyond Iajuddin Ahmed, beyond the departure of the alliance administration, there is the paramount requirement for an election that will throw up a government as dedicated to upholding national history as it is toward charting a clear, democratic and secular course to the future. It is time for our long, frightening darkness to lift.

Syed Badrul Ahsan is Executive Editor, Dhaka Courier.